Out and about

 I went down to London on Wednesday, just for the day.  I had lunch with my son who works in the City, and then went to see a couple of things in the afternoon.  I visited a free exhibition near Farringdon at the Goldsmith's Centre called The Craft of Tea 1660-2024 featuring silver teaware from a private collection, starting right from early examples when tea had just arrived in England, up to very recent works by UK silversmiths.  Some lovely things.

Then I hopped on a bus out to the Shoreditch Town Hall to visit Craftworks, a showcase of artisans and craftworkers in conjunction with London Craft Week.  Some very beautiful and expensive displays in the institutional grandeur of the old town hall, everything from glass blowing to tapestry weaving.  All very high end, lots of nice things to admire.

I finished with a trip up to Camden Lock Market, somewhere I hadn't been for a few decades.  At one point, say 30 years ago, I felt I knew London pretty well: I'd worked in various locations around the city, I'd done all the tourist spots and heritage walks etc.  But this week's trip really made me feel like I don't know London at all anymore - a combination of having forgotten and because so many things have changed.  Camden Lock is much more organised than I remember: most of the kiosks are in purpose built lock-up units now and there is a lot of tourist tat, but it's still a labyrinth of converted industrial buildings and covered over alleyways. Amidst the tat and t-shirt shops are some of interest: a branch of Bandai Namco complete with gashapon machines, a Japan food store (bought some mochi), an American sweet store (bought some Red Vine licorice), a secondhand bookstore, and hundreds of food stalls with cuisine from around the globe.  

Back at home, I have finished up Version 2 of my travel knapsack.  I'm waiting for a good heavy rainfall so I can test out how waterproof it will be. I haven't any way of sealing the seams so they will let in some water, but overall it should be a lot more water resistant than my old one.  The straps aren't going to be as comfortable though, but I'll test it out in Latvia and see how I get on.

I've done a little more work on the Lori Holt My Favourite Things quilt top, swapping out one background fabric I didn't like and adding a bit of sashing, but I still need to choose a border fabric.

I've also loaded my oldest quilt UFO onto the longarm, a reproduction Lone Star quilt that I bought as a kit  over 20 years ago at Houston Quilt Market.  I started piecing it at our last house, put it together 10 years ago in this house, and actually basted it into a sandwich on my old quilting frame a few years ago but had been procrastinating ever since about the quilting.  Now that I have the bigger machine and can use rulers to do the continuous curve quilting on the points, it's all so much easier.  Fighting with it at the sit down machine and attempting to free motion the coninuous curves would have been a nightmare.

I've started a fair isle hat which is the Bonnie Isle hat, the 2022 Shetland Wool Week patttern.  I bought the kit in 2022 from Jamiesons' using Spindrift yarn but hadn't got around to actually making it. I want a project to take to Latvia although it will be a bit bulky with all the colours - maybe I can squash it into a compression cube.

We had our first night away in the caravan: a test camp not far from the storage site.  As well as having to replace the gas bottle and discovering a few things we had forgotten, I found more gifts from the stupid cat. Not content with shedding all over my duvet and pillow, she must have been kneading our matched set of throw pillows as well, which now feature several pulled threads and snagged loops hanging out.  Free cat anyone?  We did have some nice walks along the nearby canal and saw lots of narrowboats, marinas and locks on the canal.